Pardon my Rant

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez was one of the most enjoyable books I have read this year. As mentioned in previous blog entries, I was absolutely in love with the diction, the lyrical structure of the sentences, the way Márquez was able to make absolutely everything sound beautiful. He has a voice unlike anything I have ever read, and from the first page, I was sucked straight into this story. I absolutely loved every moment…

…until the end.

I have to say, the ending of this beautiful novel left me with a disgusting taste in the back of my mouth. To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t enjoy the last quarter of the book nearly as much as I had the beginning. Úrsula, the steadfast woman who held the house together, who had a cure for every possible ailment imaginable, the woman who brought in the most reliable source of income for the family for years and years, was turned into a blind and hallucinating plaything for the little children. I was very annoyed that Márquez did not give her a more dignified death. Once she died, there was really no one left that I wanted to read about. I had already invested a great deal of emotion and love into the stories of Úrsula, José Arcadio Buendia, Amaranta, José Arcadio, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, Rebeca, Aureliano José, Arcadio, Aureliano Segundo, and Remedios the Beauty. I did not care much for the reclusive José Arcadio Segundo, and I had very little love for any characters after. Fernanda del Carpio was a stuck-up little snob who overpowered Úrsula and forced the entire household to go through stupid rituals so that she could feel more like a Queen. I had absolutely no sympathy for her. Santa Sofia de la Piedad, the wife of the late Arcadio, was the only living character that reminded me of how the book began, and she rarely appeared. The house seemed dominated by Fernanda and her wayward children. They were all off at boarding school, so we never really formed a bond with the characters. Our first impression of Meme is when she shows up to the house with about sixty of her classmates without telling her parents that they are coming. My first thought was, “Wow. What a spoiled little brat.” Then, just as I was beginning to like her rebellious character, her lover is shot trying to visit her and she is sent to a convent, never to be heard from again. José Arcadio was a boring character that only surfaced long enough to be in love with the late Amaranta and then die.

The last hope I had for this novel rested in Aureliano, the son of Meme and her lover. As a child, he was kept in captivity and refused any contact with the outside world by none other than the wicked witch of the west—Fernanda. Again, what a selfish little princess. I was secretly waiting for some moment with that adorable wild-child would find a window he could sneak out of and go cause trouble like the beloved Buendias of the beginning of the novel. Instead, he remained thoroughly trapped, and when he was finally allowed into the outside world, he had lost all curiosity for it. When Amaranta Úrsula returned to Macondo with her husband Gaston, I was shocked at how boring and lifeless Márquez portrayed Macondo. In the beginning, Macondo was such a magical place, always buzzing with life. They were visited by the incredible gypsies, they took up arms and rioted when Don Mascote tried to dictate their lives, and there was a shower of yellow flowers when José Arcadio Buendia died. What has become of all those people now? What happened to the Macondo we all grew to love?

But most of all, what truly horrified me about the ending was the fact that the BABY WAS DRAGGED OFF AND EATEN BY ANTS!!!! Did Márquez really have to do that? I almost threw up when I read the line, “It was a dry and bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the world were dragging toward their holes along the stone path in the garden” (414). So I will happily describe how I think the book should have ended. Amaranta Úrsula should have borne a child by her husband Gaston, who is not a Buendia, and therefore the child would not be a Buendia. Then Amaranta Úrsula and Aureliano’s love affair should have begun. When the child was old enough to travel, Gaston should have found out about the love affair and then taken the child far away from his unfaithful mother. While Amaranta Úrsula was pregnant with Aureliano’s child, that is when Aureliano should have deciphered the last lines of the Gypsy poem and realized that Macondo was about to be swept off the face of the earth. Then father, mother, and unborn child could have at least died together, rather than be killed separately by childbirth, ants, and the destruction of Macondo. And then the book could have ended with the child of Amaranta Úrsula and Gaston hearing of the deaths and one day returned to Macondo with dreams of rebuilding it as it had once been. This way, the Buendia line has died off, as was predicted by the gypsies, but there is still a glimmer of hope in the hearts of the readers for the legendary Macondo to be rebuilt. (912)